


Hick

by AdamantSteve



Series: WIP Amnesty/FicDump [7]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, phil is from the south
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-20 01:51:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1492321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdamantSteve/pseuds/AdamantSteve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil has to investigate something in his home town - a place he left long ago and hoped never to return to. He would happily have never visited again, and most certainly didn't want Clint to come find out about the man Phil used to be. </p><p>Fic where Phil grew up poor in the deep south before transforming himself into Agent Coulson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hick

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE: **this story is unfinished and unbetaed**.
> 
> For the prompt: _Warnings: potential for Classism and Stereotyping (economic/social class-based discrimination and use of demeaning/debasing a person based on that person's place of birth in conjunction with their manner of speech and behavior)._
> 
> _Coulson was born and raised in a small town in the Deep South. Once he escaped and joined the Army at age 18, Phil did everything he could to hide his roots. He changed his accent and the way he talked, walked, and dressed so that people wouldn't look at Phil and think 'useless, white-trash redneck'. It's been years since Coulson slipped up and allowed hints of his past self to break through his 'Agent's Agent' persona, but with strong evidence of Hydra activity near his home town, Phil has to go undercover as himself, his old self, to investigate._
> 
> _I would love to see something focused on how both Phil and the Avengers team reacts to the revelation of Phil's past._
> 
> _Bonus points for somehow including Anvil Shooting._

 

The smell was the worst of it. It wasn’t a bad smell, or a strong one, just dust and far away livestock and stillness, but it was worse than the prickling heat and the scratch of dried up hay stems underneath him because it smelled so much like home. 

 

He was Phil Coulson of SHIELD, he reminded himself, adjusting his shoulders where he lay on those sharp yellow spikes and looking down the scope of his rifle. Better to have Barton or Sipowics for a job like this but this was where he’d learned to shoot afterall; old tin cans from the porch pinging loud into the wide open air. He was more than capable of shooting from a distance. It was the close up stuff he didn’t want to do. 

 

And best they weren’t here anyway. As far as they were concerned, he’d always been Phil Coulson of SHIELD. 

 

-

 

The house was the same as it had always been, he supposed, though it looked older and smaller than he remembered it. The man on the porch looked older and smaller too, surveying Phil slowly with just his eyes moving up and down to take in the bluejeans and shirt that felt more like a uniform than any Phil had ever chosen to wear. “Well well well. The prodigal son returns.”

Phil nodded. “Dad.”

The man didn’t move from where he was sitting, hands clasped in his lap, feet up on the railing around the porch, leaning back on what looked like the same ratty old garden chairs that’d been there when Phil had left. “It’s been a while,” he said once Phil had reached the porch proper. “It has that, sir.” He’d practiced in private to get his voice just right, looser and lazier in every way that he’d tightened and buttoned himself up since leaving, but it still felt uncomfortably easy to slip back into it. “Mind if I stay awhile?” 

His father raised an eyebrow in shrugging acquiescence and still didn’t move when Phil opened the screen door and walked inside. 

 

“Beer in the fridge if you want it,” his father drawled as he followed him in. “Hot out.” 

 

Nearly thirty years since Phil had been there and it was practically unchanged. China cats either side of the fireplace that Phil remembered from being a kid. A chip out of one ear from where he and his brothers had been bouncing a baseball around that they’d all three of them been given a hiding for. The unfairness still rankled him after so long. He’d _told_ them something would happen. 

 

“Staying long?” The old man asked, sitting in the well worn seat infront of the television and leaning back like he had been on the porch, this time with a beer in one hand. “Just a couple days.” He went to fetch a beer from the fridge for himself. Same old loud thing he remembered. How could a fridge last that long? 

His father didn’t ask him questions; that was kind of his thing. He’d wait til you’d get so crazy waiting for him to say something that you’d just tell him everything and more besides, so Phil didn’t bother to waste time. “Time off. Figured I’d come see y’all.” He mentally bit his tongue at how stilted it felt saying ‘y’all’ like that. Clint said it sometimes when he was joking about himself and every time Phil worried somehow he’d known about him, about all this. That he could sense it somehow.

 

But Clint didn’t know. No one but Fury knew that he was born here, in this two-horse town full of dust. 

 

-

 

It was the perfect place for a little cell of Hydra to pop up. Wide open spaces with enough abandoned barns and shacks that things and people could move around unnoticed. Throw something in the back of a truck with a tarp over it and you could be anyone, do just about anything. Phil pitched his gear in the back of his own, a sturdy but clunky old thing with rusted red paint and drove out, back up to the field where he could watch over the maybe-probably secret base where men were doing god-knows-what. 

 

There were more people than there had been the day before. Too many for Phil to take out alone, he was loathe to admit. He didn’t want anyone placing him here from his new life. If he could wrap this up tidily on his own and slink home like he’d slunk here, so much the better.

 

But it wasn’t going to happen. There were at least fifteen of them, maybe more, and the town was small enough that if it was happening at all there had to be local police involved, so calling them in would be pointless. 

 

Phil took a deep breath of that awful air and let it out through his nose as he watched three men carrying big sacks of something from a flatbed truck into a barn. No, he definitely needed to call in back up. Shit.

 

-

 

“Never thought I’d see you in _overalls_ , sir,” Clint smirked, leaning on the doorframe of Phil’s motel room. 

“Needs must,” he replied, busying himself with cleaning his gun so he didn’t have to look at him. All the parts laid out on a towel took him back to the army, endlessly assembling and disassembling their guns to see who could do it the fastest. It felt like a very long long time ago. 

 

He slipped the pieces of metal back together, the weight in his hand familiar and grounding in the face of this merging of worlds. 

 

Clint was still standing there, the setting sun throwing him into stark silhouette. He’d gotten himself a battered old cowboy hat from somewhere and Phil was struck with thoughts of the Marlboro man. “You eat yet?” Clint asked, doing something with his hands. “No,” Phil replied after trying to think of a way to get out of going anywhere with him in Dalhart, but Clint would find out soon enough that just about everyone knew him here. Might as well get it over with. 

 

The bell on the door of the diner was the same. It shouldn’t have been such a surprise but it was. Natty Hanes was still working there behind the counter, but she didn’t seem to recognise him, which Phil sent a silent prayer of thanks to the heavens for. They slid into the same booth Phil had taken his first ever date to and ordered burgers. “You in town for business?” asked the waitress, a kid with the name badge ‘Lori’. Phil looked out the window and let Clint answer, his vowels drawing out and flattening as he spoke, “somethin’ like that.”

 

It was empty but for a small family in another booth who Phil was sure he’d recognise if he paid attention. He kept his eyes down and fiddled with the peak of the cap in his hands instead. Clint fidgeted across from him, agitated because Phil was being weird. “You’re bein’ weird,” he said. Phil looked up and smirked. This place was as good as any, the baby was crying and the toddler spilled something so enough was happening for a briefing of sorts. “What did Nick tell you, exactly? About here.” 

Clint shrugged. “Just that you had contacts and you needed backup. Why? Is there something else going on too?” 

Phil licked his lips. “No. I just wondered if-” The waitress appeared with their big oval plates. She cocked her head and looked at Phil and his stomach dropped. This was it. “Cole? Cole Junior? Am I seein’ a ghost?” Clint looked at Phil and back at her, and he grinned shyly like he’d been caught. “I thought that was you when you walked in but now you took your hat off I know it is. What’re you doin’ back here?! We all thought you done brushed the dirt off your hands and never looked back.” 

Phil tried to forget Clint was there as he answered, shrugging back into an accent he’d spent years ironing out. “I just got some leave is all. Figured I’d come see if anything’s changed. I see you’re still as pretty as ever.”

 

“Ha ha!” She laughed sharp and loud. “I can see the army ain’t hurt that charm of yours. You married?” She eyed him, coquettish and theatrical. It was Phil’s turn to laugh. “I’ve been waitin’ on you.” She laughed again and then looked at Clint. “And who’s this? Friend of yours from the army?” She gave him something akin to the coquettish look from before and Phil laughed. “He’s retired outta the force. Lookin’ for work. I said I’d see if they’re hirin’ at the new dairy place. See if I can call in any old favors.”

Clint smiled and shook her hand. “Ma’am,” he said. 

She stood for a moment just looking at Phil, shaking her head. “Phillip Coulson Junior back in Dalhart. I never thought I’d see the day.” 

 

When they were back in the truck, full of burgers that Phil had forgotten were so good, he waited for Clint to start. He figured it’d be a laugh first, maybe some mocking impression of Phil’s accent. He wasn’t expecting, “I thought you were from California.”

Phil stopped at an empty crossroads and looked out at the road. “That’s where I went to Basic.” He signalled even though no one was there and turned; left instead of right towards the motel. Clint nodded in his peripheral vision. “But you grew up here.” 

Phil took a deep breath. “Yes. I grew up here. I didn’t want to work in a pig farm my whole life so I left and joined the army.” He hoped that would be enough but he knew Clint too well for that.

“You never came back?” 

 

The road was dark, bugs flitting through the beams of the headlights as they drove along a road Phil had burned into his mind. “No. Not in thirty years.”

“Why?” 

“Nothing to come back to. I liked my life in the army better.” 

“What about your family?” 

Another deep breath. The road was endless. 

“My mom moved away when I was a kid. My dad remarried and I guess he figured I was old enough to look after myself,” he said with a shrug. 

Clint laughed. “You sound like Stark.”

Phil couldn’t help the indignant gasp he let out, and it just made Clint laugh even more. “Fuck you! I don’t sound like Tony Stark!” 

Clint didn’t reply but Phil could see his grin. He kept on driving and a quiet tension slowly filled the car. At least he knew it now: Clint really did laugh when he found out this was the origin of Coulson.

 

“Why hide it? Just part of your whole untouchable aloof Agent deal?”

“Something like that.”

“Cause it seems like you’re embarrassed.”

Phil wasn’t going to deny it. Silence resumed until Phil slowed the truck, turning off on a dirt road til he stopped, the beams of the headlights illuminating a run down shack with a half-caved in roof. 

Clint looked at him expectantly and Phil nodded towards him. “That’s where I was born. My grandmother’s house.” He looked at Clint and waited for his reaction. 

He nodded. “Ok.”

“Ok?” 

Clint laughed again, just a puff of air through his nose. “What do you want me to say, Phil? I don’t give a shit where you were born. I don’t even know where I was born. Who cares?”

Phil deflated a little and Clint observed him for a long moment. “Why do you have such a stick up your ass about it?”

Denying it would just underline it more, so Phil shrugged. “It’s not who I am. I wanted-” more, better. He didn’t finish his sentence. 

“I won’t tell anyone,” Clint promised him, voice empty of derision or smirks. Phil looked at him. “Really?”

Clint shrugged. “Makes no odds to me. I’m sure you’ve got your reasons.” 

Phil had half a dozen responses to Clint mocking him or making a joke or just whatever thing he’d say but this he wasn’t prepared for at all. ”Thank you,” he said eventually. Clint nodded and half-smiled, waiting for Phil to figure out what the hell he was meant to do next. He backed up back onto the road and drove to the motel.

 

-

 

Back on that scratchy grass with Clint alongside him, watching through their own scopes the little hive of Hydra milling about and moving those bags around. Now that Clint knew, even though it was still uncomfortable to think that it was out now, it was a comfort to have him there, better eyes than Phil’s already spotting things he hadn’t noticed himself. 

 

“What do you think that stuff is?” Phil asked. Clint exhaled and hummed. “Explosives. Could just be sandbags. Could be potatoes for all I know. They make moonshine down here, right?” Phil huffed a laugh despite himself. “Well, I wouldn’t know about that.” Clint laughed back. “Right.” 

“It could be a still,” Phil agreed eventually. “Though if it is it’s huge. Whatever it is, those barns don’t look big enough for what they’re taking in there every day. I’ve been here less than a week and I’ve seen truckloads going in there.” 

“You think it’s underground?” 

Phil watched a man get back into a truck and rev the engine before driving back out, leaving the place empty despite there being five people there earlier. “Those men’ve got to have gone somewhere.” 

 

Phil saw Clint put down the sight he was looking through and look over at him. “So what’s the plan, boss?” 

Phil kept watching in case anything else happened while he replied. “I’ll ask around, talk to some... contacts.” He paused, not sure if he wanted to lay everything out if he didn’t have to. “I think I know who’s most likely to be involved in whatever this is, even if it is just moonshine or some underground hydroponics thing. And if they are, we’ll have an in.” 

“Sir,” Clint replied, rolling onto his back like Phil wasn’t baring his soul here. 

“But you need to know ahead of time, I didn’t always used to be... the man you know now. At all.” 

Phil concentrated on the door that the men had disappeared into and tried to ignore the way Clint had shifted to look at him. “Now I’m just intrigued,” Clint’s voice had the lilt of a smile in it. Phil didn’t say anything more.

 

-

 

Phil had never been old enough to come into the bar when he’d actually gone there, so it felt strange not having the fake ID that the proprietors knew was fake because everyone in the whole town knew everyone else’s business. The music didn’t grind to a halt when they walked in, but heads did turn and chatter died down as Phil and Clint stepped up to the bar. The bartender was someone Phil didn’t recognise who eyed them suspiciously before Phil spoke up. “Two beers.” 

 

He nodded and by the time there were cold beers in each of their hands, the chatter had resumed. Phil concentrated on the college football game on the tiny TV in the corner of the bar til a hand slapped onto his shoulder. 

“Sir, I’m gonna need to see some ID,” a gruff voice said, the hand not moving as Phil turned to see Billy Smith, the exact person he’d been hoping to find. He looked old.

Phil laughed and hugged the man. “Billy Smith, you still kicking around this old town?”

“Hell yeah I am, greatest town in America! What are you doing back here?”

Phil shrugged. “Economy. Figured I’d see if I could find work out here. Missed the old place.”

“Looking for work? What about your boy here?” He looked Clint up and down, but not menacingly, just in the rather overt way Phil remembered that so often just came out rude. “Friend from the army. Billy, this is Clint. Clint, Billy Smith. Mayor of Dalhart.” Phil and Billy snorted at that, and Clint looked confused. “I’m not the mayor,” Billy confessed. 

 

“So what kinda work you looking for? You still anvil shooting?” 

Phil laughed. “I ain’t tried it in a long time but I’m sure I ain’t forgot.” 

“What about you?” Billy nodded at Clint. “Anvil shooting?” Clint replied. 

“You’re friends with this guy and you ain’t never gone anvil shooting? Phil. You gone soft on me?”

Clint shrugged apologetically. Billy looked at Phil in glee. “Finish your beers and we’re educating your boy here. C’mon.”

 

This was without doubt the most country thing Phil had ever done, and it was kind of a shock how easily it came back. 

“Phil here was the best at this shit,” Billy promised Clint, who looked totally out of his depth. Phil packed the black powder into the base of an upturned anvil int he dirt yard Billy hadbrought them to and tried not to be too obvious about listening in. 

 

 

-

 

All in all, it was a short mission. Clint and Phil went undercover, working with Billy and swiftly finding out that yes, Hydra have a lab beneath the farm they’ve been watching. Since they were in with the big wigs, there’s pretty much nothing that didn’t  get shared with them, making their job almost too easy.

 

The not so easy part, for Phil at least, was acting the part infront of Clint, or rather, Clint seeing that he’d been acting the part infront of him as long as Clint had known him. But Clint didn’t say anything about it.

 

Eventually though, after a long day carting things around the farm and pretending not to be taking clandestine photos of everything, full of paranoia, Phil snapped.

 

They were in the motel again, Clint sprawled out on the bed eating fries and flipping through a magazine, and something about the lackadaisical nature of the flips of the pages, or the slow, disinterested way he was eating the fries, instantly enraged Phil.

 

“Goddammit, Barton!” He cried, startling Clint out of his perusal of InTouch magazine. He looked up, half a fry dangling from his mouth. 

“What?” 

“I know you’re dying to say something. It’s been nearly a week.” 

Clint sucked the fry into his mouth and swallowed it. 

“Say something about what?” 

“This!”

Phil gestured to himself - the torn jeans, the soil caked around the frayed bottom cuffs, the tshirt with holes in it. Clint frowned in confusion.

 

“Huh?” 

 

 

 


End file.
